On the same day the United States Senate prepares to pass the first bipartisan gun law reforms in nearly three decades, the Supreme Court thumbed its nose at the legislative branch and the American people.
In a 6-3 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc v Bruen announced on Thursday morning, the court’s conservatives struck down the Sullivan Act, a 1911 state law that required New Yorkers to hold permits issued by local police to carry concealed weapons. The law applied not only to handguns, but to any weapon small enough to be secreted on a person, including knives, clubs, brass knuckles and bombs.
The Sullivan Act required applicants to meet statutory criteria, including safety training and a background check, and “demonstrate a special need for self-protection”. Police had discretion in deciding whether applicants satisfied the standards. The law survived multiple legal challenges, and guided gun safety legislation in many states.
The court’s majority ruled that the imposition of a special need standard for a constitutionally guaranteed right violated the constitution. This built upon the court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v Heller, that decreed the Second Amendment guarantees Americans’ right to own guns for self-defence in their homes.
Yesterday the court extended that right to self-protection beyond the threshold of home and hearth. The judgment did allow that restrictions could be imposed in “sensitive places”, but offered no guidance as to what venues might qualify. Notably the Supreme Court prohibits the carrying of firearms within its premises.
With this decision, the court has made a radical power grab and opened a Pandora’s box for future litigation to repeal gun safety laws nationwide.
Few people know that the Second Amendment has never granted unfettered gun rights to Americans. For most of the country’s history, laws regulating the ownership and use of firearms have been the prerogative of the states. This harkens to the originalist ideal of federalism as codified in the Tenth Amendment, whereby powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved for the states. This is why the Sullivan Act remained in force for more than a century, permitted by successive Supreme Court jurists.
However, starting with Heller, and expanding now with New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc v Bruen, the Federalist Society’s hired guns now sitting on the nation’s highest bench have upended 230 years of jurisprudence. This caps a half-century effort by right-wing activists and gun manufacturers to declare open season on America.
There is nothing originalist about cherry-picking the Second Amendment to serve an ideological agenda, while trampling the Tenth in the process. So it’s one baby step forward in Congress, and one giant leap backwards across the street.
If only the court’s conservatives showed the same deference to the authority of state legislatures on gun safety as they will sanctimoniously proclaim when they scrap women’s right to autonomy over their own bodies.
Thirty years ago, we lived in the USA and our kids went to school there. There was a great deal to like about that period although the militarisation of the police and the threat of gun violence always cast a pall. But looking at it in 2022 I would not make the same decision to work there. The cult of owning and carrying a gun, as an end in itself, is bizarre. It was never more vividly illustrated than in the town of Uvalde Texas last month when a contingent of heavily armed and armoured law officers stood around for an hour holding their assault rifles, afraid to enter a room where 19 children were being slaughtered. The response of the US Supreme Court was not to start to protect children from future threats but to join the cult. When does the USA reach the bottom of this pit?
If the Supreme Court is so confident that US citizens will act responsibly with guns, only using them in life-threatening situations, why are weapons not permitted in the Court? Do as I say, not as I do.
The US is self-immolating and it appears to be voluntary. Putin must be quietly chuckling, ditto China.
My conspiracy theory is that Putin is secretly behind much of this, via Trump, the NRA, Hollywood, and the Supreme Court. All Putin has to do now is stand back and watch American citizens all shoot themselves, saving him the trouble.
Honestly, Putin isn’t that competent – if he could organise something like /that/ he’d have done a better job crushing Ukraine.
4 years of having his man in the White House certainly gave Putin the confidence to invade and loot Ukraine.
I agree. Putin uses the same gaslighting methods via the state-controlled media to manipulate his population into believing blatant bare-faced lies. Putin’s infiltration of t Western democracies has been via FB and other online methods that his infiltrators can exploit. America is fertile ground for Putin to sow his seeds of fake news and conspiracy theories.
The NRA also do not allow guns (or any other weapons) at their annual meeting either. They don’t want their members settling policy arguments with AR 15 rifles or by challenging Wayne La Pierre to a draw in the foyer. The hypocrisy is staggering.
I gather that poll after poll in the US finds that most of the populace are in favour of gun control laws, just as they are in favour of women’s control of their bodies. The story here is the ongoing failure of US democracy. Decades of Congressional deadlock and corruption saw the courts take over Congress’ lawmaking function. Even more so following Trump’s big success in stacking the courts, and not only the Supreme Court. Presidents are totally impotent in the face of that.
Which makes the case for compulsory voting all the more appealing. After a couple of election cycles not only would there be a more balanced result but also it would alter the gerrymander that happens in the US. How? Well for a start more and more politicians would realise that more and more people would want their vote to be of value.
The US is Rome in decay, descending into its own toxic vortex of a deluded view of ‘freedom’.
Given that the right wingers on the US Supreme Court celebrate themselves a black letter lawyers, they are completely incapable of explaining how the 2nd amendment (surely one of the looniest provisions of any constitution) can be interpreted to mean that any person can carry and sort of weapon anytime for any purpose. The 2nd amendment says the following:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
One does not have to be linguistic parsing expert or an entomologist to conclude that the right to bear arms is qualified by its relationship to an organised militia and to the security of the free state.
However, the Supreme Court’s more recent and radical interpretations (really only since the end of the 20th century and notably in 2008) is that militia and security of the state qualifications are meaningless. This is is a just a legal view. In respect of the recent decision striking down a law that New Yorkers have accepted and abided by since 1911, the moral, social and political activism of that decision is terrifying for the future of a civil society in the hell hole that America has become, a society led by ignorance, stupidity, radical selfishness and a hatred of others.
Agreed. In what universe could it possibly be said that current gun culture in the US is ‘well regulated’?
Being entomologists, the supremes are all pissants.
Do they study butterflies? Beetles?
Maybe Beatles, given their ages.
Does Uncle Sam have a death wish?
As there are over three quarters of a million abortions annually in the Benighted States it seems to have been granted.